Donald,
This part of the discussion seems to me like an oversimplification. In my experience, architects who can't draw on paper also can't draw with more recently-developed design tools. I think the idea that digital design stifles creativity has been debunked numerous times over the past thirty years. Examples of avant-garde design that would not have been possible without digital technology are the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Ray and Maria Stata Center, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and the Louis Vuitton Foundation--all of which, I believe, used Frank Gehry's CATIA technology. And I recall Gehry stating that these designs would not have been possible without CATIA. I'm currently working on a very large project in a historical style that would not be possible for our small team to complete in the time available without Autodesk Revit and rapid prototyping technologies that create detailed samples for review at low cost and without the weeks required to build wood or stone mock-ups. I was part of a 1987 USC School of Architecture team that documented many of the challenges and opportunities offered by computer-aided design, drafting, and manufacturing that were not a factor of traditional methods. And the use of these tools for high quality, creative, groundbreaking projects over the past thirty years has borne out our observations.
I'm not necessarily advocating for AI, nor do I believe that new technologies can turn poor design into great design. I'm advocating for the view that a tool is a tool. The traditions associated with a tool does not imbue it with magical properties. The sterile, Miesian, rectangular curtain wall boxes with which we're all familiar--like the one in the meme--was more common between World War II and the digital revolution than it is now. And the ornament-encrusted stone monuments of the Renaissance weren't any more possible or ubiquitous between the demise of the École des Beaux-Arts and the digital age than they are now. The fact is that our collective tastes, styles, economies, building institutions and practices, finance systems, and other cultural factors are far more responsible for the difference between the architecture of the 16th Century and the 21st Century than the brains possessed or not possessed by our pencils.
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Sean Catherall AIA
Murray UT
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-01-2025 09:51 PM
From: Donald A. Koppy AIA
Subject: Will AI Replace Architects and Provide a Path to Digital Immortality?
Sean,
While I'm a huge proponent of BIM since 2006, the big worry is it taking away our creativity.
CAD/BIM works easier in straight lines, and are we focusing on what it can do easy vs should do.
Now coupled with A.I. we can analyze any design to death.
Will this hinder our creativity as A. I. is based only on past examples?
ps. borrowed that Meme from a post in LinkedIn.
pps. Which building would you rather walk by?
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Donald Koppy
Mead & Hunt
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-01-2025 07:11 PM
From: Sean Catherall
Subject: Will AI Replace Architects and Provide a Path to Digital Immortality?
Donald, assuming your meme is intended as a serious comment: the meme appears to draw the wrong conclusion. Both results can be achieved with pencil and paper, and both results can be achieved with more recent tools. I believe the differences lie elsewhere.
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Sean Catherall AIA
Murray UT
Original Message:
Sent: 04-01-2025 12:01 AM
From: Donald A. Koppy AIA
Subject: Will AI Replace Architects and Provide a Path to Digital Immortality?

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Donald Koppy
Mead & Hunt
Original Message:
Sent: 03-28-2025 06:31 PM
From: Daniel Wyckoff
Subject: Will AI Replace Architects and Provide a Path to Digital Immortality?
What is Design? Asking AI to mimic someone else is stage setting more than design and brings up copyright issues to boot. If Design is analysis of site, programming, budgetary and material components then each would need to be solved through a relational statement when tasking AI to generate output. Ask it to make the most economical design and it may generate a rectangular plan. Then ask it to make the most economical design that meets the program area requirements. It may not include the proper egress paths and simply show spaces adjoining one another. So then you would need to apply an adjacency matrix to prioritize room relationships. Which is more important the adjacency or the economy of the building envelope being as small as possible? So you relax the economical building envelope criteria a little bit to keep the rooms from being odd-shaped and then start looking at fenestration. My point is you should not expect to press a button to have AI design one solution for you, but rather you can generate 100 different options at a time so you can use your wisdom to hone down that 100 to perhaps 10 and then start adding more and more criteria either positive or negative to arrive at the one final solution.
My favorite X-Files episode is where two bumbling gentlemen stumble onto a Genie wrapped in a rug. They then start to ponder how to use their new-found powers and the wishes that they are granted. Each wish causes more and more problems because they are not being specific enough with the criteria of the wish. They finally wish to be invisible and shed their clothing to wander around completely unobserved only to be hit by a truck crossing the road. So we have this electronic genie in AI. It does not think for us, but can perform a specific task faster and does not complain. Let us not surrender our talents for sake of expediency and keep our own standards high throughout the process.
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Dan Wyckoff AIA